LONDON – The public vote for the 2013 Costa Short Story Award will close at midnight on Friday 17th January 2014. Six stories, shortlisted for this year’s Award, are currently available to download either to read or listen to from www.costa.co.uk/costa-book-awards/costa-short-story-award and the public is invited to vote for its favourite.
The winning author and two runners-up will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony on Tuesday 28th January 2014, when the winner will receive £3,500 and the authors in second and third place will receive £1,000 and £500 respectively.
Over 1400 entries were received for this year’s competition, which is now in its second year. The competition, open to both published and unpublished writers, is for a single, previously unpublished short story of up to 4,000 words written in English by an author aged 18 years or over.
All entries were judged anonymously (ie without the identity of the author being available to the judges) by a panel including Richard Beard, Director of the National Academy of Writing; Fanny Blake, novelist, journalist and Books Editor of Woman & Home magazine; writer Victoria Hislop and Simon Trewin, agent at William Morris Endeavor.
They selected the following six stories:
- Still Water, BC
- The Forgiveness Thing
- The Gun Shearer
- The Keeper of the Jackalopes
- The Old Man and the Suit
- The Papakh Hat
The identities of the authors will be revealed after public voting closes on 17th January.
For more information on this year’s Costa Book Awards, go to www.costa.co.uk/costa-book-awards.
